The National Park Service (NPS), a government body overseeing federally protected public grounds, has removed all mention of transgender individuals involved in the Stonewall Uprising, a 1969 New York protest led by queer and trans activists that is said to have jump-started the gay rights movement.
On its webpage, NPS has changed its terminology, replacing “LGBTQ+” with “LGB” or “LGBQ,” excluding transgender people from the narrative. The word “queer” has also been removed. The revised page now states: “Before the 1960s, almost everything about living openly as a lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB) person was illegal, but the events at the Stonewall Inn sparked fresh momentum for the LGB civil rights movement!”
Early on Friday, activists staged a protest at the national monument to decry the changes as erasing transgender individuals’ contributions to the movement. (The monument, in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, was designated as such in 2016 by President Obama.)
The NPS’s move aligns with the Trump administration’s broader push to redefine and omit specific language around gender identity from public spaces. In recent weeks, the administration has issued executive orders limiting legal recognition of gender identity and banning transgender athletes from women’s sports. Earlier this month, new standards released by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stipulated that active transgender troops will be blocked from receiving some gender-affirming medical care from military physicians.
Activists and historians have strongly criticized the changes, calling them an attempt to erase history. The Stonewall Inn and the Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative released a joint statement condemning the move on Thursday: “This decision to erase the word ‘transgender’ is a deliberate attempt to marginalize the very people who paved the way for many victories we have achieved as a community.”
Transgender activists Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera were key figures in the Stonewall Uprising. They later co-founded Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) to support homeless transgender youth, and Rivera fought to ensure transgender people were included in legal protections gained by the broader LGBTQ+ movement.
